


What Do You Know?

by orphan_account



Series: Everybody's a Gossip [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mentions of Rape, everyone knows something oliver doesn't, kink meme prompt, s2 not compliant, what am i doing i'm supposed to be working on my nanowrimo novel right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2557328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here was my prompt: Twenty percent of his body is covered in scars, the doctor said. One part of that, happened to be scars from repetitive anal tearing, indicating long term sexual assault.</p>
<p>(Which, no, that wasn't it, it was just that him and Slade didn't exactly have access to any lube except spit and sometimes blood.)</p>
<p>And the doctor gently explains to Moira that Oliver has refused to talk, but the physical evidence is rather obvious. And Moira tearfully confides in Walter, and Thea overhears. And Moira knows Oliver might be aggressive/wary of other men, so she carefully explains the situation when she hires a bodyguard. And Laurel learns about the scars and asks questions and Thea lets slip about the 'assaults,' and of course that means that Tommy learns about it from her.</p>
<p>And this whole thing has just spiraled out of control and Oliver is very confused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Do You Know?

Oliver had expected to be treated with a certain amount of delicacy. People don’t come back from the dead every day, after all, and not after having spent five years on a desert island. He wasn’t really anticipating being treated like a live IED that might explode at any moment, though. Nor had he really imagined that it would go on for so long. His mother, Walter, Thea – hell, even Laurel and Tommy were treating him with kid gloves now too, though they hadn’t at first.

***

It started with Moira, though Oliver wouldn’t come to know it for quite some time.

The night he arrived back in Starling City and was whisked off to the hospital for a complete medical examination, his mother was pulled aside quietly by Dr Lamb before she could step foot in his room.

“Twenty percent of his body is covered in scar tissue,” Dr Lamb explained to her, his tone gentle and his eyes sad. “Second degree burns on his back, and arms. X-rays show at least twelve fractures that never properly healed.” He hesitated, for just a moment, as if trying to decide how best to break bad news to her – as if her heart wasn’t breaking enough already at the pain her baby had been forced to endure.

“There are scars from repetitive anal tearing,” he said, at last. “Indicative of long-term sexual assault.”

Moira’s breath hitched, but she maintained her composure. “Has he said anything about what happened?” She needed to know.

“No,” Dr Lamb replied. “He’s barely said anything.”

She turned away from him, back to the window through which she could see her son. He was standing, staring out across the city, perfectly still. He never used to be so _still_.

“Moira,” Dr Lamb said, softly. “I’d like you to prepare yourself. The Oliver you lost, might not be the one they found.”

_How could he be?_ she thought. He was her son, though, and she would be there for him through anything, so she steeled herself for whatever might meet her on the other side of that door – even if it was a screaming fit and flying fists – and entered the room.

Oliver didn’t move, didn’t even twitch, though he had surely heard the door open.

“Oliver?” she said.

He turned, then. Stared at her for what felt like an eternity, his eyes glittering. And then his lips quirked and he cocked his head a little to the side. “Mom.”

When she smiled and stepped towards him, his smile dropped, but he moved to meet her anyway.

“Oh,” she said, and suddenly she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t stop staring at him, at his beloved face, even though his hair was shorter now and he looked so serious, so melancholy, where before he’d been all cheeky grins and laughter. She lifted her arms and stepped forwards and he didn’t back away when she embraced him, didn’t flinch, and she counted herself lucky when he hugged her back. “My beautiful boy.”

***

Moira felt sick with anxiety when she brought him home from the hospital – she had no idea how he would react to having a strange man in the house, and when he froze in the doorway at the sight of Walter, she felt her heart fluttering.

“Oliver,” Walter said. “It’s damn good to see you.” He extended a cordial hand, and to Moira’s relief, Oliver took it without causing a scene while Walter introduced himself. “Walter, Walter Steele.”

“You remember Walter?” she said. “You father’s friend from the company?”

Oliver didn’t react, but then he saw Raisa and went to her, smiling. Perhaps he felt safer around women? Walter glanced at Moira, clearly puzzled, and she gave him a look that told him she would explain later, when they were in private. He nodded tightly.

“Mr Merlyn called,” Raisa told Moira, then. “He wants to join you for dinner.”

“Wonderful,” Moira said, smiling, and she waited a moment for Oliver to react to the fact that Tommy would be joining them – but he didn’t behave as if he’d heard a word Raisa had said, and Moira felt her heart sink because she knew how much Tommy had missed his best friend, how losing Oliver had almost torn him apart even though he would never admit to it. It would be terrible if they couldn’t reconnect.

“Oliver?” Moira said, trying to get him to respond. “Did you hear that?”

But Oliver wasn’t paying attention. He was staring up the stairs, and Moira followed the line of his gaze to Thea, who had appeared from her bedroom.

“Hey, sis,” he said quietly, smiling up at her and for the first time he reminded Moira of the boy she’d lost.

“I knew it,” Thea said, almost running down the stairs and Moira wanted to tell her to move slowly and not startle her brother but she didn’t want to do it in front of everyone.

“I knew you were alive!” Thea continued, throwing her arms around Oliver’s neck when she reached the foot of the stairs, and Oliver did not flinch or cringe, thank God. “I missed you so much.”

“You were with me the whole time.”

***

Her mother’s behaviour was stilted and awkward. Thea noticed it immediately. Ever since her father and brother died – though she guessed Ollie hadn’t really died after all – and Moira had fallen into that depression that only Walter had managed to bring her out of, Thea had kept a leery eye on her mother’s behaviour. She was always afraid that one day Moira would slip back, and this time not even Walter would be able to save her from the dark places in her mind.

So Thea noticed immediately when Moira started behaving oddly. Of course, it could just be that Ollie was home – but shouldn’t this be a _happy_ occasion? Why did her mother look so… so… _nervous_?

After Ollie went up to his room, which Moira really had left exactly as he’d left it the day he got on the _Queen’s Gambit_ , Moira and Walter retired to the study for what was clearly going to be a private conversation. They had that look about them, the one where they kept sending each other significant glances that held some sort of meaning that Thea couldn’t quite decipher. Obviously, they were going to talk about Oliver – what else could they talk about right now anyway? – and she wondered why her mother felt the need to keep whatever it was private.

Thea made herself busy with her phone, then she sneaked over to the door to listen to what her mother was saying. It was her brother Moira was having a private conversation about, she _needed_ to know what they were saying.

“What is it, Moira?” Walter asked.

And suddenly, Thea heard her mother sob. Just once.

“He was raped, Walter,” Moira said, her voice sounding strained. “Repeatedly, according to Dr Lamb.”

There was a second’s pause, as Walter took the time to digest that. “How do they know?” he said, at length.

“The scarring,” Moira replied. “Oh, my poor boy. He was hurt so badly.”

Thea backed away from the study door, quite certain that she did not want to hear any more of the conversation. Her heart was beating too fast. She could feel it in her throat, hammering against the inside of her ribs, and she was having a hard time breathing. She almost knocked over a vase in her hurry, but managed to right it, and then she dashed upstairs to her room. She needed a minute to think, to process, what she had learned.

By the time dinner rolled around, she thought she could have a conversation without giving anything away, and she went down to join Ollie and Tommy, and her mother and Walter. Tommy seemed to be ecstatic, not unlike a loyal dog whose master has returned from a long trip away, and he seemed to be trying to talk Oliver’s ear off, telling him about all the things he had missed. He talked about _LOST_ , about the Superbowl, about the President.

Later, Thea wouldn’t be certain what made her ask Oliver what the island was like. In retrospect, it seemed like a cruel, heartless thing to ask about, particularly given the way he just… shut down.

“Cold,” he said, and that was the only answer he gave.

Tommy tried valiantly to salvage what was left of their dinner, but after that, it seemed like he couldn’t wait to leave the table, and Thea’s appetite died, her stomach turning sour. Things turned terse. There was discussion about QC. Oliver wanted to go there. Raisa tripped and fell and Oliver caught her, murmuring something low in Russian, and Thea was fairly certain that he had never known Russian before. Oliver snipped at Walter about wanting to sleep with Moira, and everyone turned to look at Thea.

“I didn’t say _anything_ ,” she said.

After Moira broke the news that she and Walter were married, Ollie left the table.

Thea couldn’t finish her dinner.

***

_There wasn’t a lot of romance involved in Slade’s proposition._

_“Fancy a quick fuck, kid?”_

_It had been three weeks since their failed attempt at rescuing Yao Fei, and they had missed the plane off the island. They had been kept inside the fuselage by inclement weather, largely because Slade had this idea that if he let Oliver out in the sleet, he would come down with hypothermia, and he claimed he didn’t particularly feel like dealing with that shit today._

_Still, it was cold, and wet, the fire had burned low and they were beginning to run out of dry firewood, and both of them were getting restless._

_Oliver glanced sharply at Slade. “What?”_

_“You heard me the first time.”_

_Oliver glared at him and pulled the blanket he was huddled up in tighter around his shoulders, not bothering to deign that with a response. Half-an-hour later, as night was beginning to fall, and he couldn’t get seem to get warm, he started to reconsider._

_Slade hadn’t said anything else. He was staring off into the frigid rain, through the hole in the side of the fuselage. Oliver glanced at him several times, trying to make up his mind, and then, before he could back out of it, he said abruptly: “Yeah, okay then.”_

_Slade came out of whatever reverie he’d been in, turning to regard Oliver silently for a moment before he grinned. It was a feral sort of grin, the kind that didn’t really reach his eyes, and Oliver tried not to feel too cowed. “C’mere, then.”_

_Oliver got to his feet and shuffled over, letting his blanket fall to the ground, then paused in front of Slade, who hadn’t bothered to get up._

_“How do we do this, then?” he asked._

_“How do you think?” Slade replied._

_And although it was somewhat uncomfortable, largely because they didn’t have any lube beyond spit and precum and blood – Oliver bled a little – it wasn’t too bad. Better, Slade didn’t seem to care that Oliver wasn’t inclined to leave his sleeping roll after, seemed perfectly willing to share body heat for the night, and Oliver was glad for the touch of a human hand that didn’t want to hurt him for the first time in months._

***

Before John Diggle met Oliver Queen, he met his mother. Moira Queen told him – briefly – about the attack that had prompted her to hire a bodyguard for her son. She seemed anxious. Her expression, her stance, belied her emotions, though she appeared to be attempting to reign them in.

“Oliver will be down in a minute,” she said. “Before he is, there’s something I need to tell you about him.”

“Okay,” Diggle agreed.

“I would advise your… discretion in this matter, Mr Diggle.” That sort of sentence had a tendency to ring alarm bells in Diggle’s mind, because it usually meant he was going to be asked to turn a blind eye to something off the less legal variety – or sometimes just less moral. Either way, it was usually best not to become too embroiled in a client who had the potential to drag him through the mud with him, but he decided to hear Moira Queen out anyway.

“While my son was away, he was sexually assaulted numerous times. I request that you treat him with suitable caution, both for his sake and your own.”

Diggle saw why when Oliver Queen walked out the front door of the mansion a couple of minutes later. Although he might not have any military training, Queen wasn’t a small man and he looked like he could throw a mean right hook if provoked.

The first time Queen slipped away from him, Diggle was willing to overlook it at Oliver being unused to having an unknown man around, and needing his space. Jumping out of the back of a moving car seemed like a somewhat extreme length to go to in order to avoid his own bodyguard, the man who was supposed to _protect_ him, though.

Later, at the party Merlyn threw for him, Diggle kept a closer eye on him, and when he left the party, he felt almost inclined the give Queen his space. Almost. He had a job to do.

“Is there something I can help you with, sir?” he asked.

“I just wanted a second to myself,” Queen replied. He had an odd, skewed smile on his face.

And Diggle was inclined to believe him. “I believe you, Mr Queen,” he said. “If you’re done, though, the party’s this way.”

Queen tried the door. “It’s locked,” he said, stepping back, and that was the last thing Diggle remembered.

He wasn’t sure how Oliver Queen had got the jump on him, or even _why_ , but he guessed he must’ve gotten too close or pushed the wrong buttons, somehow. The question of where Oliver Queen learned to fight floated around in his mind for a while, but that answered itself in due course, or at least partially, after the incident where Floyd Lawton shot him and the Hood saved his life.

Dig wouldn’t ever say it aloud, but the fact that Oliver was the vigilante completely blindsided him. Well, sure, there were a heck of a lot of convenient coincidences where Oliver had disappeared and the Hood had put arrows in people, and they had both turned up in Starling City at about the same time, but he wouldn’t have believed it was true.

After he found out, he decided that Oliver needed someone to watch his back more than ever, even if he refused to admit it to himself.

***

“Were you marooned on an island called Lian Yu for five years?” Laurel’s father asked.

“How is that even relevant?” Laurel asked, at the same time as Oliver said: “Yes.”

Oliver seemed to be determined to be one of the worst clients she’d ever had to defend. Laurel bit back a sigh.

“I don’t need to show relevance,” Quentin said to Laurel. “But since you asked, whatever happened to your client on that island turned him into a cold-blooded killer.” He turned his attention to Oliver. “The physician that examined you reported that twenty percent of your body is covered in scar tissue.”

Oliver said nothing. He wasn’t meeting her father’s eye, either.

“The machine won’t work unless you ask a question,” Laurel pointed out.

“Did that happen to you there?” Quentin asked, obligingly.

Oliver finally appeared to rouse himself out of whatever he was remembering, and look at her father. “Yes,” he said, swallowing.

“When you came back, you told everyone you were alone on the island. Are you claiming that your scars were self-inflicted?”

“No,” Oliver said. He took a deep breath. Laurel wished he wouldn’t say anything more. At the same time, she had realised a long time ago that he never talked about the island, and quite by choice. This was the first time he’d mentioned anything about what happened there.

“I wasn’t alone,” he added. “I didn’t want to talk about what happened to me on the island.”

“Why not?” Quentin asked.

“Because the people that were there tortured me,” Oliver replied. Laurel glanced up sharply. She hadn’t expected that.

“Have you killed anyone?” Quentin asked.

Oliver dropped his gaze to the table, and seemed to be working his jaw, as if literally chewing over the question. Finally, he looked up, and said, quietly: “Yes.” There was a moment where Laurel glanced at her father, but Oliver seemed to have more to say, so Quentin waited.

“When I asked your daughter, Sara, to come on that yacht with me,” Oliver said. “I killed your daughter.”

And suddenly, it seemed like Oliver couldn’t stand being hooked up to the polygraph machine anymore. He ripped fingertip sensors away, and the blood pressure cuff off his arm, and then left the room as quickly as he could without stumbling. Laurel and Quentin both turned to the technician, who shrugged. “I’d have to study the data,” he said. “But just eyeballing it, it looks like he was telling the truth.”

She headed on up to the Queen mansion later that night, hoping to see Oliver, who she conveniently met right in the foyer – in front of the bar. And she guessed that some things never do change, really. Or was this just Oliver play-acting as the person he used to be, in an attempt to fool everyone else, so they might just stop asking questions.

They went up to Oliver’s room together, and she apologised for her father’s actions, explained that her mother had left the two of them after Laurel went into law, explained to him that she didn’t blame him.

“Why don’t you hate me?” he asked. “You _should_.”

He kept doing that, kept trying to prove what an awful person he was, how he was just like he had been back in the day. And he wasn’t honest, now, he lied more than ever. But he was doing it to protect himself, to protect them.

“I did. For so long, I did, Ollie. But, after today, I realise that – I was so focused on what had happened to my family that I didn’t even stop and wonder what had happened to you.”

He looked pained.

“I didn’t know about the torture. Or your scars. What happened to you about the island was far more than you deserved. And I was wrong that I didn’t ask you before. But I’m asking you now, because I need to know. I need to _see_.”

“Are you sure?” Oliver asked.

Laurel nodded. “Yes.”

He began to unbutton his shirt – the _stupid_ fake prison shirt, what was he even _thinking_ with this party, this was madness? – and Laurel pushed it aside to reveal his chest. The scar that first caught her attention was the mottled one on the right side of his chest, looking almost like a starburst, but then the tattoo drew her eye to the left, and the long scars that could only be knife wounds.

_Since when does Ollie have a tattoo?_ she thought wildly, as she looked at the scar that looked almost like an animal bite over his right hip. But no, that wasn’t right, it was too large, surely? _Two tattoos_ , she amended, when she saw the Chinese writing.

For a moment she had trouble finding words, catching her breath. Then she managed to say: “How did you survive this?”

“At times, I wanted to die,” he murmured. “In the end, there was something that I wanted more.”

He wasn’t looking at her. She wondered what he meant, but he was already buttoning his shirt up again, and then he abruptly left the room. When she attempted to follow him, he was gone, and she wondered how he managed to disappear so quickly.

Thea was lingering in the hallway, though, which was puzzling because she usually liked parties.

“Hey, Thea,” Laurel said.

“Hi,” Thea replied. She looked shifty, like she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to, which was odd, because this was her house and her room was right there – unless she’d been up here because Oliver was? But why would she be following her brother around?

That question seemed to almost answer itself.

“You saw them, didn’t you?” Thea said. “The scars?”

Laurel was caught off guard. “Yes,” she said.

Thea seemed to search her face, desperate and, for reasons Laurel could not understand, on the edge of tears. “Did he say anything to you?”

“I’m not sure I should discuss that with you,” Laurel replied, thinking back to the words _I wanted to die_ , and figuring Oliver would probably want to keep that private.

“He said something to you?” Thea asked hopefully. “Please, Laurel. Did he say anything about the man who attacked him?”

To Laurel, it had looked like several men had attacked Oliver over the years, and with various weapons, from the scars he had. She must have looked confused, because Thea seemed to realise something.

“No,” she said, almost to herself. “He didn’t. Laurel – I don’t – oh, how do I say – should I _even_? Yes. You’re his attorney, it might be important. Laurel, listen to me. On the island, Ollie was raped. Over and over. We’re all really worried about him. Well, Mom and Walter don’t know I know, but I see the way they look at him, and I _know_.”

“How do you know this, Thea?” Laurel asked.

“I heard Mom and Walter talking,” Thea admitted. “The day Ollie got home. And he’s, you know, not right.”

“Not right?”

“It’s like—” Thea broke off, seeming to struggle to find the words to express herself. “He’s wearing this mask. Of how he used to be. But he isn’t the same Ollie. Not anymore. We can all see it. I don’t know why he’s pretending. Doesn’t he know we understand?”

Actually, Laurel had noticed the exact same thing.

***

After Laurel left the party, Oliver was attacked by an unknown assailant. Laurel thanked God her father had been there to save his life. And then the Hood was seen across town, so Oliver and the Hood couldn’t have been the same person, which meant that he was no longer being looked at as a suspect.

The following morning, she returned to the Queen mansion, ostensibly to have a final conversation with her client about his polygraph results, but actually just to check on Ollie and make sure he was all right.

She found him in his room, which looked like a tornado had hit it. He heard her open the open door, and turned to face her, smiling lightly.

“Rough party,” he said, and she wondered why he did that, why he made light of a situation in which he’d almost died.

Again. From some of those scars, it looked like he’d almost died more than once.

“My father told me what happened,” Laurel said, stepping into his room but feeling even more conscious of respecting his space, now. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, nodding, as if all that had happened was he’d sprained an ankle or got a bee sting, not had to fight against an intruder for his life.

Laurel held up the papers she had brought with her. “These are your polygraph results,” she said. “My father asked you if you’d ever been to Iron Heights. It’s the prison where there vigilante saved me last week. It’s also where you and I went on our eighth grade field trip.” He was wearing a studiously blank mask, although he nodded slightly.

“When you said that you had never been there, I thought that maybe you were just nervous, or that you had forgotten,” Laurel went on. “But then I looked at your results, and there is a slight flutter in your answer to that question. And if you lied on one, you could have lied on others.”

“What happened to me being too selfish to be a masked crusader?” Ollie asked, swallowing.

She didn’t think he could be a masked crusader, not really. That wasn’t what she meant. “Oliver. I saw your scars.”

He stepped towards her. “Do you want to know why I don’t talk about what happened to me there?” he asked. “Because if people knew, if you knew, you’d see me differently. And not as some vigilante guy. As damaged.” And it was too late, because she already knew, but she couldn’t say anything, so she held her tongue and he continued talking.

“I don’t sleep. I barely eat. I can barely sign my _name_ , let alone aim a bow and arrow.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, handing him the polygraph results. Then she fled the room.

She hadn’t known it was so bad.

_Oh, Ollie_.

***

_The events that led up to the taking of the_ Amazo _, and then his captivity aboard the ship under Slade were a nightmare that Oliver still struggled with sometimes._

_Afterwards, though, after he’d cured Slade and they were both in Hong Kong under Amanda Waller, things had been – less bad. They might not have exactly reconciled, but Slade no longer wanted to rip Oliver’s throat out, so that was something. For a time, they saw each other only in passing. They had different handlers, and they performed different tasks. They both knew each other was in the city, though, and it was at the back of Oliver’s mind always, like an itch he couldn’t scratch._

_Then Slade was placed with Maseo and Oliver. Waller’s only explanation was: “I prefer to keep my trouble-makers in one place.”_

_Slade had a slightly different version of events. It was more along the lines of: “She thinks I’ll behave better with you around.” And he gave Oliver a speculative glance._

_“Is she threatening someone?” Oliver asked._

_Slade didn’t say anything, though._

_It didn’t take long for them to fall into old habits. They never slept together under Maseo’s roof. Rather, it was back alleys and rooftops at night and sometimes abandoned buildings. Oliver didn’t mind._

***

“So you _lied_ to her?” Diggle said.

_Why does he sound so skeptical?_ Oliver wondered.

“Or maybe,” Diggle continued. “You just gave her a version of the truth.”

“I told her what she needed to hear, Diggle,” Oliver said, putting down the box he kept his bow in. “She was too close.”

“The sad thing is, I think you actually believe that,” Diggle said, getting up and moving to stand by Oliver’s shoulder. “I think things didn’t go down exactly as you planned – you didn’t count on so many people having questions, doubting you. You didn’t think about what happens when you lie. Especially when you lie to the ones you love the most.”

It felt like they were both talking about two different things, here, somehow. Or like Diggle knew something he didn’t. Oliver glanced at him wearily.

“When you were stuck on that island,” Diggle went on. “I don’t think you were counting on the effect it would have on people in your life. Or how it might hurt them.”

“You’re wrong,” Oliver said. “I think about it all the time. And just to be clear, not being able to tell my family the truth – it doesn’t hurt anyone worse than it hurts me.”

Diggle met his eye. “Maybe there are some things you should consider opening up about. Not this.” He made a sweeping gesture around the Foundry. “But other things.”

Oliver huffed and turned to leave. He didn’t have time for this cryptic nonsense.

“Where are you going?” Diggle asked.

“Mueller still has to sell those guns, and I have to stop him,” Oliver said, without turning back around.

“Oliver,” Diggle called.

“He had his chance,” Oliver growled.

Diggle let him go.

***

Tommy knew everyone was keeping a secret, and it had to do with Oliver. He wasn’t blind, or an idiot, even though he sometimes pretended to be both.

Oliver had been sort of quiet ever since he got back from playing castaway for five years. Tommy figured five years on a desert island would do that to a guy, and when there were gaps in their conversation that Ollie used to fill, and when the silences sometimes seemed strained or awkward, well, Tommy pretended to ignore them. He figured Ollie didn’t remember how to make small talk anymore, and that was fine, he could fill the silence instead.

So if Oliver was a little out of sorts, well, Tommy put it down to being five years different. He wasn’t the same person he’d been five years ago either. He would like to think he’d grown up, at least a bit.

That did not, however, explain why everyone else was behaving oddly. He first noticed it when he went to dinner at the Queen mansion. Moira, Walter – even _Thea_ seemed like they were walking on eggshells, and he’d never seen Thea shy about _anything_ before. She was normally bold and outspoken. Yet.

Around her brother she seemed to move slower, speak softer. They all did. Hell, even that bodyguard seemed to be cautious. When they went to court, to have Oliver’s death certificate rescinded, Dig had seemed almost overzealous in his attempts to get the paparazzi to back away, but hesitant to actually get anywhere near Oliver.

Things came to a head after he noticed that Laurel, who had until then behaving relatively normally – she hadn’t been afraid to chew Ollie out – suddenly began to tiptoe around him. He first realised she was doing it when they ran into each other for the unfortunate dinner at _Table Salt_ , where Tommy and Laurel ended up on a double date with Oliver and Helena Bertinelli.

Oliver was acting a lot like his old self, talking easily and reminiscing over old times. Laurel, however, had gone quite quiet, as if she suddenly didn’t know what to say. Tommy had been afraid, for a time, that she would bring up the fact that his father had kicked him out and that he needed a job, but she seemed recalcitrant to speak to Oliver. Then Helena left in a storm, and Oliver got up to follow her, leaving Tommy alone at the table with Laurel.

“What’s going on?” he asked her plainly, then.

Laurel startled. “What?”

“I’m not an idiot,” Tommy said. “There’s something going on between you and Oliver.” He was determined not to be hurt about it, if there was. Laurel was Oliver’s girl, through and through. “Are you fighting or something?”

She sighed, then, and sat back in her chair. “I don’t – no. We aren’t anything, Tommy. I just don’t know what to say to him anymore.”

“You had a lot to say not too long ago,” Tommy pointed out.

“Yeah, well. That was… before,” she said, a little lamely.

“Before what?”

“Can we go home?” she asked suddenly.

Confused, Tommy agreed, and they got up and left. He sent a quick text message to Ollie to tell him they were leaving, and then they caught a taxi back to Laurel’s, since they’d both been drinking and anyway, he didn’t have a car anymore.

“Laurel,” Tommy said, when they got through the front door of her apartment. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m not sure I should, Tommy. It’s… not my secret to tell.”

He followed her through to the bedroom, where she slipped off her shoes and started to change out of her evening wear. “What the hell does that even _mean_?” he asked.

“It means I found something out about Oliver that gave me a new perspective, okay?”

“The same thing that has Walter and Moira and Thea and his bodyguard all acting shifty?” Tommy said. “Because don’t think I didn’t notice. I did. It’s really obvious. And now you’re doing it too, Laurel. What’s going on?”

Laurel sat down on the edge of the bed, patting it, and Tommy took the invitation to sit beside her. If she was telling him to sit, then that meant that whatever she was going to tell him had to be huge. He sort of hoped that she wouldn’t say that Ollie was really the Hood. He didn’t want to know, even if he was. But he wasn’t _blind_.

“Look,” she said. “You can’t say anything to Oliver, okay? I’m not even supposed to know, but Thea let it slip.”

Tommy nodded, wondering what on earth this could be about because he didn’t actually think Ollie would tell his sister if he was the Hood.

“When he was on the island,” Laurel said. “Ollie was sexually assaulted. Repeatedly. There are scars. He’s – he’s not doing well, Tommy, even though he pretends like he is. He told me doesn’t sleep, and he hardly eats… I just don’t know how to act around him anymore. I want to be there for him, but I don’t know how.”

Tommy felt like his world was crumbling all over again. He wrapped an arm around Laurel’s shoulders and pulled her flush against his side. “We’re Ollie’s friends,” he said. “We’ll just – I don’t know. There will be a support group or something out there that’ll give some sort of advice. And we’ll be there for him.”

***

Oliver agreed to take Tommy on as bar manager for _Verdant_ when Tommy approached him a couple of days later. He had no idea why Tommy’s father decided to spontaneously cut him off, and he didn’t particularly care. Tommy was his friend, and he would do what he could for him. And it also solved the problem of who was actually going to bother running the club, because God knew Oliver didn’t have the time to talk to suppliers of do any of that sort of thing. He was too busy crossing names off his father’s list, particularly after the Helena debacle.

Christmas snuck up on him. It wasn’t until Diggle made an offhand comment about taking his nephew to see Santa that he realised what time of year it was.

“There were no holidays on the island,” he told Diggle. “There were just – every day was – how do I stay alive? And to do that, you had to forget things. Like Christmas.”

Diggle looked at him for a long moment, a pained expression on his face. Oliver thought he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.

“My Dad threw a party every year, and he would put a Christmas tree in every room,” Oliver said. “The whole mansion smelled like – it smelled like Christmas.”

“Maybe you can give the list a rest and just enjoy the holidays with your family,” Diggle suggested. “Besides, I hear Saint Nick has a list of his own. I’d wager you’re on the nice column.” He wiped his hands and got to his feet, made an abortive movement where for a moment it seemed like he was going to clap Oliver on the shoulder before seeming to think better of it. Why was Diggle afraid to touch him now, when they had just been training together a minute ago and Diggle hadn’t been pulling his blows then?

“Go home, Oliver. You deserve it.”

Oliver didn’t get up immediately, but sat and thought for a while.

***

When he arrived home, he encountered Thea making her escape through the foyer. She was dressed extremely nicely.

“Hey,” he said. “You look very pretty. What’s the occasion?”

Thea paused, grinning faintly guiltily. “Mom and Walter are having a dinner party with some big muckety-mucks.” Oliver winced sympathetically. “Best night of my life,” she agreed.

“Thea,” Oliver said, because there wasn’t anyone better to ask. “Why aren’t there any decorations up in the house?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“No wreaths,” he explained. “No trees.”

“Everyone’s just been really busy lately,” she said, shrugging, but he knew she was lying from the nervous grin she directed at him. “I’m sure they just haven’t gotten around to it, yet.”

“Does Mom at least have some of those boxes of candy canes?” he prompted her. “Remember we used to race to see who would finish first?”

“Yeah,” Thea nodded. “I always won.”

“No,” Oliver said. “You cheated.”

“Well, she went sugar-free last year, so I doubt you’ll be seeing any of those around. Sorry.” And with one last apologetic shrug, Thea made good her escape up the nearby staircase. Frowning slightly with bemusement, Oliver followed the sounds of voices through to the dining room. There, he found his mother and Walter, along with a dozen others, including Tommy’s father and the police commissioner.

As soon as she saw him enter the room, Moira quietly excused herself and approached him. “Oliver, sweetheart,” she said softly, drawing him back into the hallway. “You don’t need to be here for this. Why don’t you go on up to your room and I’ll have Raisa bring you some dinner there?”

Thea had to help woo the muckety-mucks but he didn’t? Since when?

He learned a long time ago not to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, so he agreed graciously and headed upstairs. His solitude turned out to be convenient, because he didn’t need to make up some lame excuse to leave the room when he got a notification on his phone about Adam Hunt’s death.

***

Admittedly, the whole thing with the Dark Archer went really, really badly.

Things got kind of weird at the hospital, though. Okay, well, that was a lie. Things got weird before the hospital. Thea didn’t want him to throw a Christmas party, largely for herself, but partly because she didn’t think he was ready. Whatever that even meant. And his mother kept wringing her hands, and asking him if he could deal with all the guests, and he had to assure her about a dozen times that yes, he would do fine.

Well, no, there was the whole thing where he still sometimes saw most people not so much as people but as targets or threats and either way they might need to be eliminated, but he wasn’t about to _tell_ either of them that. And anyway, his self-control was iron – he wasn’t about to randomly attack a little old lady or anything just because she slopped brandy on him.

Then Laurel and Tommy arrived and they both looked at him with this sort of mixed sadness and fear which he came to realise was worry, and he wondered if he’d done anything to frighten either of them but he was fairly certain that he hadn’t. And then both of _them_ were asking him if he was okay, too.

He was actually slightly glad when he got an excuse to leave the party early, because everyone just seemed concerned. It was beginning to grate on his nerves.

And he got his ass handed to him by the Dark Archer, which was awful. No one had beaten him that badly since Slade hopped up on Mirakuru. Dig was there, though, and Dig was smart enough to take him to the hospital and tell them that he’d been in a fictitious motorcycle accident.

He half thought he was drugged when his family turned up, though. They flitted about the bed, and no one except Moira seemed willing to touch him, although Moira laid her hand on his arm and moved her thumb in circles.

“You bailed on _your own_ party,” Thea said.

“It seemed like the right move at the time,” Oliver replied. Talking was somewhat painful. A punctured lung would do that, he supposed. “It wasn’t really the best timing, in retrospect.”

“You wanted to have a party to bring us closer together,” Walter said, moving to stand behind Moira. “Well, here we all are.”

Oliver guessed that was true enough, even though the other three didn’t know why he was really in hospital. He laughed, once, and it turned into a grunt of pain.

“We’re going to let you get some rest,” Moira announced then, leaning forward to kiss him on the forehead before turning to leave.

After they had gone, Thea carefully sat down on the edge of his bed, beside his leg. “So. We never really got to the exchanging of presents part,” she said.

“I don’t really think I deserve a present,” Oliver told her.

He wondered why that comment made her bite her lip, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. She sniffed. “Look, I know that I’ve been hard on you,” she said. “That this – all of this, coming back home and everything being different – has been hard, and I’m sorry I’ve been making it difficult. You’re not the same and I’m not the same.”

He blinked blearily. “Maybe we can accept each other,” he suggested. “Not for who we were, but for the people we are now?”

Thea sniffed again, and held up a pair of candy canes she’d been holding behind her back.

“Aw,” Oliver said. “No cheating.”

She hugged him, then, and it was their first hug since the one she’d given him that first day he’d arrived home. Ever since that day, it had been like she was afraid of him, and he let her have that fear – he had pinned Moira when she woke him in the middle of that nightmare, after all, a little fear was warranted.

***

Later, after Thea and Moira and Walter had gone home, when Diggle was sitting drowsing in one of the hospital chairs, keeping guard against _who_ Oliver wasn’t entire certain, there came a knock on the door of Oliver’s hospital room door. It was soft – but it woke Dig anyway, and a moment later the bodyguard was on his feet beside the bed, looking alert and fully prepared to fight whoever came through that door.

Slade let himself in, glanced at Oliver and then at Diggle, and said: “Who the fuck are you?”

“Excuse me,” Diggle said, clearly struggling to keep his cool. “But this is a private room, and visiting hours ended—”

“About five hours ago,” Slade concluded, waving a hand dismissively. “Yeah, I know. Kid, I checked your chart – please tell me you weren’t in an _actual_ motorcycle accident.” He considered Oliver for a moment. “Nah, not enough road rash. So. I go home for a few months to get my affairs in order and you end up nearly dead. Who’d you piss off this time?”

“Dark Archer,” Oliver replied.

“I’m not a psychic. I haven’t been here, remember? My plane literally got in two hours ago. You’re going to have to elaborate.”

“Oliver.” Diggle sounded pained. “Who is this?”

“Dig, this is Slade. He saved my ass more times than I can count on the island. He’s here to help us.”

Diggle glanced between the two of them, evidently struggling to find words.

“ _Ploughed your ass, too,_ ” Slade said, in Chinese. Oliver snorted, then winced. Slade switched back to English. “Anyway, this Dark Archer of yours…”

***

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so bad i should be doing something else entirely right now and even if i was writing fan fiction i should have been working on finished synchronicity and not writing this but what do i do? i write this. (also i'm meant to be doing the nanowrimo right now like original fiction styles but noooooooooo)
> 
> o well here you go.
> 
> i know i didn't write the bit where either party found out what they were missing out on but maybe i'll do i sequel i don't know.


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